Consumers of beauty care and personal care products, including but not limited to make-up, creams, and lotions, often prefer to try these items before purchasing them. For the manufacturers of these cosmetics, enticing a consumer to try a particular product can be a challenge on at least three fronts. First, there is an issue of informing a consumer that a particular product exists. Second, there is an issue of how to make a product standout among competing products. Third, there is an issue of how cost-effectively to grant access to the product for sampling.
One tactic for marketing products is to display them in an aesthetically pleasing environment within a store. In order to do this while maximizing the use of available floor space and shelf space, manufacturers and store owners often rely on display units. These display units may provide products on shelves for easy access for the consumers. Sometimes the display units will also provide access to an item for trial by the consumer. Typically these items, which may be referred to as “testers,” are placed in front of additional units of the same item that the consumer may purchase.
When granting consumers access to testers, manufacturers and store owners face at least two challenges. First, when making testers available, vendors need to have an adequate means for encouraging the return of a tester to the same location from which the consumer picked up the item, while maintaining the overall intended aesthetic design of the display. Second, vendors need to find, but to date, have not found, an adequate means for flexibly accommodating different sized products on the same unit at the same and or different times. Thus, there is a need for new and flexible display units that provide access to testers, as well as for systems that incorporate these display units and methods for using these display units.